


Dust of Dreams

by SylvanWitch



Category: Spartacus: Blood and Sand
Genre: Episode Tag, Great and Unfortunate Things, M/M, UST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-29
Updated: 2012-08-29
Packaged: 2017-11-13 02:56:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/498674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanWitch/pseuds/SylvanWitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set not long after the events of "Great and Unfortunate Things":  Spartacus finds no peace in dreams.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dust of Dreams

His cry in the dream awakens him, the echo of a moan still hanging in the darkness of his cell when he opens his eyes, half hoping, half dreading to see Sura standing beside his bed.

 

Glad now that she’s all that’s left of his old life to visit him in dreams, Spartacus rises and follows the trail of moonlight to his barred window, finding the training ground bathed in blue light, as if submerged.

 

To test the evidence of his senses, he steps out into the night air, feeling its humidity like dew on his skin, the phantom heat of the midday sun still rising from the dry sand beneath his feet.

 

He could be the only one in the world for the silence, unbroken even by the barking of distant dogs or the closer noise of caged men in restless slumber.

 

Stretching, he feels the stiffness of bruises he’d earned in the day’s games, but his mind lingers only moments on the memory of the three opponents he’d slain. 

 

Atticus of Sardinia.  Artaius the Gaul.  Gaius, Scourge of Macedonia.

 

Once, he’d etched the names in his memory to honor men who, like him, fought bravely for their own reasons, and, like him, had wished a different life for themselves and their loved ones.

 

Now, he cared not for their motives and spared no thought for their secret dreams.  Merely, he consigned them to his memory because they were brothers, and brothers deserved remembrance.  It was all the glory gladiators might have, any of them.

 

A whisper of his true name closes his eyes against the thought that when he falls, it will be under the shield of a name not his own.

 

Shrugging off a frisson of unease, Spartacus walks to the edge of the cliff, where the land plunges away to the sea far below.  If he holds his breath and stills the pounding of his heart, he can just divine the susurrus of the waves.  Or perhaps it’s the breath of a ghost.

 

He feels her even as he knows he’ll find nothing when he turns, so he’s startled into a half-step retreat when he discovers Varro standing behind him.

 

With the reflexes born of long hours on this very ground, his friend reaches out to steady him and pull him away from the brink.

 

“Gratitude,” he murmurs, shuddering off Varro’s hand and blinking away the look of worry in his friend’s eyes.

 

“Thoughts so dark should not be carried so close to the abyss,” Varro observes, his tone neutral but a cautious hope curling his lips into a half-smile.  They have known each other long enough that Varro has earned such a smile, but Spartacus feels an unreasoning anger at his implied question nonetheless.  He had offered no invitation for closer talk.

 

“My thoughts are my own,” Spartacus answers, “And unwelcome of company.”

 

Varro’s features grow wooden, as if a mask has been drawn over them, and he offers a terse, “Apologies,” already turning away.

 

His shoulder is hard but warm beneath Spartacus’ hand as he reaches out to stop him.

 

Varro’s eyes are suspicious, his muscles tense as he awaits his friend’s next words without looking at the man who’ll deliver them.

 

“I would be alone because my thoughts are dangerous,” he explains, “But if you are intent on such a risk, join me.” 

 

“What gladiator walks away from risk?” Varro jests, joining Spartacus on a bench nearby.

 

They rest awhile, quiet except for their breathing, the world around them a deception of calm.  Spartacus knows that the night holds no peace, nor darkness any cover.  To distract himself from his disquiet, he asks, “And what has pulled you from the sleep of a good day’s labor?”

 

Varro smiles ruefully and shakes his head.  “Nothing I can name save a sense that something was out of place.”  He turns warm eyes on Spartacus. 

 

“It is a sad day when the gods concern themselves with my wanderings,” he answers, suddenly aware of the heat of Varro along his left flank and the weight of Varro’s regard as he gazes steadily at Spartacus.

 

“Some say the gods concern themselves with everything you do,” Varro answers lightly, drawing the tension from between them as if he would cast it away.

 

“Idle tongues have little to do but lie.”

 

“Do you not believe that the gods show you favor?”  There is no jest in his tone now; he is asking far more than it would seem, and Spartacus fears to answer.  Some part of the former man that remains, like a wound that will not heal struck by an enemy he could never defeat, wants to rail against Varro’s words, wants to decry the gods and demand how any could be so cruel as to rob him of his life even as he’d at last reclaimed it in his shaking hands.

 

But the man he is now, this Spartacus, answers only, “Certainly they were with me today in the ring.”

 

“Yet you believe they have abandoned you tonight.  Is it only in the daylight they come to you?”

 

“Only with a sword in my hand,” Spartacus affirms, curling his hands as if he would wrap them around the cold and heavy hilts.  Of course, he cannot fight phantoms of his past with swords, whether real or imagined.

 

“And what comes to you in the night in place of the gods?” Varro asks softly, leaning closer to Spartacus, who looks up to gaze steadily into Varro’s searching eyes.

 

“A good friend and brother,” he says at last.

 

“No more than this?”

 

Spartacus’ eyes have not left Varro’s face, and he sees there the warmth grow to heat and intention.  He brings a hand up, opening it as if to surrender an imaginary sword, but cannot touch the real man beside him, night air still imprinted with the image of Sura dying before him, eyes and bloody lips accusing him of betrayal.

“What more would you have of me?”

 

It is a dangerous question, its answer requiring commitment to the cause Varro would pursue.  Spartacus is beyond such decisions for himself, awaiting only what fate brings him. 

 

“I would have you free of thoughts that drive you to the gates of the underworld before your time.”

 

“That is no answer.”

 

“Then let me speak plainly.  Whatever comfort I can offer, I would give you.  With no return,” Varro adds in some haste, as if anticipating the objection already forming on Spartacus’ tongue.

 

He removes his eyes from Varro’s level gaze, staring unseeing out over the training ground, unsure of his answer.  His mind is dragged back to his youth, when he had first learned that men would lie with boys for their mutual pleasure.  He is no boy-fucker, but he had not thought Barca less a man for the love he had shared with Pietros. 

 

And as a warrior among other warriors on the cold, eternal marches of a winter campaign, he’s known the feel of another man’s hand on his cock.

 

But…

 

“What of your wife?” he asks, though that is not his real objection. 

 

Varro laughs bitterly, but offers only, “No pledges need be exchanged, Spartacus.  What I offer is comfort, not contract.”    
  


Spartacus says nothing, still thinking, and Varro continues, voice soft with quiet understanding, “It is not of _my_ wife you think.”

 

“My wife is dead,” Spartacus grates out, voice like sand given tongue, mouth suddenly dry as bones long exposed to the unforgiving sun.  Or consumed in a funeral pyre.

 

Varro’s hand is a startling heat against his naked breast, and he feels his own heart pounding against it as his friend and brother presses into his side and breathes, “She is not.  She is here,” against his ear.

 

Spartacus does not move to touch Varro, neither to take his hand nor to push it away.  It is not the contact that constricts his throat.  He feels like he’s swallowed sand. 

 

“Gratitude,” he whispers at long last, and his voice is not his own.  It is like the whispered voice of his dreams that makes promises only to fail in the keeping of them.  “But I cannot.”

 

At last, Varro removes his hand, and the spreading cold in his chest is welcome, easing the tightness in his throat and letting him breathe again.

 

“You need only ask,” Varro says, and Spartacus once more meets his brother’s eyes.  “No more will I say of it.”

 

“Gratitude,” he says again, more like himself.  “You are a good friend, Varro.  And brother.”

 

“This brother needs sleep,” he answers, rising and reaching a hand out to Spartacus.  “Will you rest?”

 

“Sleep may come,” Spartacus answers, taking the offered hand.

 

For the briefest of moments, Varro hesitates, as if he would add another word to their exchange.  Then he squeezes Spartacus’ hand and releases it, moving the hand to his shoulder instead to gently shove him toward his solitary cell.

 

“May sleep find you but dreams remain at bay,” Varro offers, as if he had plucked Spartacus’ thoughts from his friend’s troubled head.

 

“And may yours be full of games and glory.”  It is an old saying in the ludus, and Spartacus intones it with due irony.

 

Varro laughs and waves his friend off, moving toward the cell he shares with other gladiators in the ludus.

 

When Varro is out of sight, Spartacus pauses at the threshold of his cell and spares a lingering look for the cliff’s smooth edge and the oblivion beyond.  Then he closes his door and lies down to wrestle once more with what passes in this life for dreams.

 

 


End file.
